This fall the Supreme Court of Canada will consider such disparate subjects as genetic testing fairness, lawsuits designed to shut down free expression, employment rights of Uber drivers, pension rights of RCMP members and the right to a trial within a reasonable period of time.

And from Sept. 25-26, for the first time in its history, the court will leave its historic building in Ottawa to sit in Winnipeg, a travel practice that happens regularly at the U.K.’s Supreme Court when it journeys outside London and at the French constitutional court.

Of the 32 appeals to be heard over the next three months, one of the most significant cases is about the constitutionality of the government’s 2017 Genetic Non-Discrimination Act. The law criminalizes the requirement for a genetic test, as well as the disclosure of those results, especially to insurance companies and employers.

The case is a reference to the top court brought by the Quebec government about whether the genetic fairness law grants powers outside the jurisdiction of the federal government. The B.C. government and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association are taking the same positions.

Parliament’s intent in this law, which originated as private member’s bill, was to ensure people wouldn’t refuse to take genetic tests out of fear the results would be demanded by insurance companies or their own employers.

The law was widely embraced by the House of Commons and the Senate, but opposed by former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and the Liberal cabinet, which believed the act violates the provinces’ right to regulate insurance companies.

Joseph Arvay is a Vancouver lawyer who is representing the Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness. In a brief to to top court, he argues the act, which can levy fines of up to a million dollars, is “to enable individuals to obtain the potentially enormous health benefits flowing from genetic testing, safe in the knowledge that their control over the genetic information is legally protected in all contexts.”

The court’s first fall case in Winnipeg is an appeal from a man known as K.G.K. convicted of sexual touching someone under 16. He is challenging his verdict based on the so-called Jordan anti-court delay provisions in which the top court mandated all provincial cases must be completed in 18 months, and superior court cases in 30 months.

K.G.K., who waited over 40 months, is objecting to the fact his trial judge took 9 months to write her decision, and whether that time taken in writing, which is sometimes caused by a heavy judicial workload of complex cases, can be counted in the Jordan framework.

Ontario’s anti-SLAPP law is the subject of two cases before the court in November. This legislation, designed to thwart strategic lawsuits against public participation, was intended by the Ontario legislature to dismiss defamation suits aimed at silencing someone.

One case pits personal injury lawyer Maria Bent against Dr. Howard Platnick, a general practitioner who specializes in reviewing assessor’s reports about people injured in automobile accidents.

Platnick, who makes a million dollars a year working for the insurance industry, reported Bent’s client was not catastrophically injured and therefore was not entitled to enhanced insurance benefits.

However, in arbitration, Bent’s case was settled in her client’s favour. She then sent a confidential email about details of the proceedings to a lawyers’ website where it was leaked and ended up in an insurance industry magazine. Platnick sued Bent for over $16 million in a libel action, saying several insurance companies had dropped his services.

The court will also hear the appeal of Uber, the ride-sharing taxi-like service, against one of its drivers who wants to head a class action suit alleging drivers are entitled to benefits under Ontario’s employment standards act. Uber argued its licensing agreement is governed by the law of the Netherlands and can be heard only in Amsterdam.

In another case, the court will consider whether a class action can be brought by an environmental group on behalf of all residents of Quebec against Volkswagen for equipping some of its diesel models with software designed to falsify results of emissions tests.

One of the last cases to be heard this year by the top court will come from Joanne Fraser and other RCMP members, mostly women and mothers, who went on reduced work hours under a RCMP job sharing plan so they could look after their small children. They seek equality rights, given that members who took unpaid leave and didn’t work at all were allowed to buy back pension time while the part-timers were not.

Fraser’s case was rejected by both levels of the Federal Court, but the top court agreed to hear it by leave, meaning it wants to examine the issues of the case.